Moyes maps a solid future – with or without big guns
But it is David Moyes’ attitude to the possibility of his own players running their contracts down that will perhaps be the most interesting part of this summer at Goodison Park. Failure to win at Stoke made yesterday’s game between Liverpool and Chelsea an irrelevance for Everton as they ran out of games to catch Rafael Benitez’s side despite suffering just two defeats since November and equalling their best-ever Premier League run of 10 unbeaten games.
After what has become a trademark dreadful start, Everton simply do not want the season to end, and with no chance to watch their sublime midfield for three months, neither do many observers.
Keeping that band of Mikel Arteta, Tim Cahill and Steven Pienaar together has become the key objective and the latter is the player that many are focusing on.
Pienaar, 28, has a year left on his present contract and wants parity with his fellow midfielders. Everton insist that, as Pienaar’s representative has requested, they are confident of sorting an extension before the winger heads to his homeland for the World Cup.
It is not the first time that Everton have found themselves in this kind of situation but there is one significant difference with Pienaar’s contract and the previous departures of Wayne Rooney, Joleon Lescott and Nick Barmby, which served to remind the club of where they stand in the grand order – they are not particularly bothered.
Seemingly, the days of endless paranoia are gone. It reflects a change in mind-set and Moyes expects more players across Europe to run their contracts down and that deals will get shorter for those a bit below the standard of Rooney and Fernando Torres.
That is why, rather than flogging Pienaar, who has been Everton’s outstanding performer this season, for £6m or £7m this summer, they would rather have him for another year and let him leave for nothing next summer.
If that does happen, Moyes has confidence that he can replace Pienaar cheaply, as he has proved many times in the past.
Moyes’ captain, Phil Neville, thinks there are plenty of reasons to stick around. “It shouldn’t be a concern that people will leave,” Neville said. “The manager’s ambitious, the players are ambitious, I think everyone can see the way this club is going. If it were a club on the slide, which wasn’t signing players, wasn’t getting any young players, then you’d worry but the way we are playing football and the way we’ve improved shows that this club is moving forward.
“I think this set of players want to continue this journey we are on and that everyone wants to stay. We’ve got a lot of players going off to the World Cup and we wish them all the best.
“But when they come back from South Africa, I think it’s time to knuckle down and work hard and make sure we start the season well. That’s the foundation of any successful team. We’ve got to put right what we didn’t do at the start of the season.”
With Stoke’s Rory Delap guilty of a horrid miss, Everton’s best opportunity came when Phil Jagielka’s header was ruled out because Victor Anichebe was standing in an offside position right in front of goalkeeper Asmir Begovic.
MATCH RATING: * – A shocker. Despite how it may have looked to the outsider, these sides had plenty to play for.
REFEREE: Howard Webb (South Yorkshire) 8 – Not a single booking despite both sides smashing into each other regularly. Spot on for Phil Jagielka’s disallowed ‘goal’.
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